Alla ricerca della norma perduta. Itinerari per una lettura ontologica degli studi socio-antropologici di Hans Kelsen sui popoli primitivi.

This work proposes an ontological reinterpretation of Hans Kelsen’s socio-anthropological research on primitive peoples, highlighting how these studies do not represent a marginal interest but rather lie at the core of his philosophical-legal reflection. Through the analysis of myths, rituals, and archaic beliefs, Kelsen identifies normativity as an original structure of human experience, as such preceding the distinction between nature and society and irreducible to mere causal explanation. The principle of retribution, central to archaic cultures, is interpreted as an elementary form of symbolic and social organization, capable of instituting meaning, order, and reciprocity. Far from being a legacy to be overcome, this archaic model becomes a mark of the human: Human beings are ‘human beings’ insofar as they are subjects who establish and are submit to rules. In dialogue with Heideggerian hermeneutics and Marburg neo-Kantianism, this article is aimed at showing how, behind the scientific ambition of Kelsen, there lies a true ‘ontology of law’. The archaic, more than the primitive, emerges as a symbolic place of origin in which human beings prove to be ‘normative beings’. Along this trajectory, law is no longer seen as a mere subject of study, but rather as a tool for understanding the very essence of being human.